* Microsoft: Pay up or no play
It has been a little more than a year since Microsoft rolled out Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), an antipiracy initiative that – after infuriating both corporate and private legitimate software owners – was quietly ratcheted back by Redmond. Now, it seems, “Son of WGA” might be ready to disrupt your network.
WGA was intended to ensure that only legitimate versions of Windows could get updates and upgrades. But, as reported by Computerworld: “WGA was sending back data about users’ computers every time they rebooted their PCs.”
One company, S&S Cycle, a maker of motorcycle racing parts in Viola, Wis., was repeatedly identified by WGA as having 180 PCs running with pirated copies of Windows. Worse, WGA sent that data to Microsoft every morning as employees arrived in the office and turned on their PCs, completely clogging the customer’s network!
When the hew and cry got loud enough (along with two class-action lawsuits), Microsoft was forced to pull WGA’s most intrusive features and make it optional for corporate customers. We thought that Gates & Ballmer had learned an expensive lesson.
Evidently not.
As last week’s news stories revealed, Microsoft will hamper the features of Windows Vista until it is registered rather than periodically shut down more of them over time until you’re left with a system that will only open a Web browser for one hour a day – then shutdown!
Even worse, from our perspective, the upcoming new version of Windows Server software (Longhorn) is also supposed to sport this “time bomb” functionality. A time bomb is code inserted into software that, unless disabled, “blows up” and renders the software inoperable. Freelance programmers often used to put time bombs into the applications they wrote under contract in order to have “leverage” with their clients when license renewal time came up. While this might seem rather draconian – especially for a company as big as Microsoft – it’s perfectly legal under laws referred to as the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), state laws strongly supported by Microsoft for many years (see this news story).
Given Microsoft’s track record with WGA, this is just one more reason to delay rolling out Vista and to test it thoroughly in your lab before you do so. At the same time, consider it a heads-up concerning Longhorn, which might be released sometime next year. Again, don’t be in a big hurry to roll it out.
